Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Claude Simard was the bassist in famed Canadian progressive/chamber jazz outfit Nebu which I hope everyone knows and loves. This outing from 1980 is more in the free jazz / improvised or atonal direction or rather complete lack of direction. Leriche is the sax player, Beaudet is pianist and of course Leger is on drums. For fans of Simard (like me), note that he is co-composer on the two tracks from side B. (Considering it all sounds extemporaneous the assignment of composers seems odd to say the least.)

Let's recap a little today. I've been a contributor on this blog for roughly three years plus one or two months. I think we can agree that in that time period we've heard a huge amount of great progressive music, and it always shocks me to learn there is more to be discovered in this rough time period of mid-sixties to mid-eighties, of course, since we are gathering our rosebuds as we may from all over the world, it makes sense there would be so much to explore. Nonetheless it's quite surprising how much was put out in the progressive rock / fusion area. And it goes without saying that for each album posted here there were dozens which were not worth posting due to mediocrity-- although I've always found that albums I hate (usually the simple ones) it seems a lot of other people seem to love. What about the notorious 'scraping the bottom of the barrel' syndrome, are we there yet, close to a terminal diagnosis? I don't think so, I've heard some albums so magnificent recently, such as for example the Gold and Mr. Euphoria I put up, that I don't think we're quite there yet. I will try to bring up a few other such masterpieces in the next little while for some summer cheer, including more that were discovered long ago by the mighty osurec. How I miss getting those stunning unknown tastes from the master! There are certainly a lot of German records from this period that few know about that are worth for all to hear, and I hope I'll have time to post a few of those discoveries, including some highly advanced fusion, and king crimson-inspired instrumental work. Many of these originated from discobasso's prodigious record-hunting skills and I really can't take credit for those. At this late point, it seems mostly the Americans and Germans are still battling it out for progressive domination. And think of all the contributors who have fallen by the wayside in those three years! Eventually I will too-- but it might be some time still I can hang on.